About a week ago I received an email from someone named Jo Davidson who asked whether I had a larger picture of Hezekiah Malone’s wedding picture. Who could this be?

Malone brothers

We began to communicate. Jo Davidson is the great-great granddaughter of John Walter Malone, one of Hezekiah’s younger brothers. Since I am a great granddaughter of Hezekiah I knew she had to be quite a bit younger than I am. Jo Davidson is putting together a book about her ancestors and has done a lot of research. We ended up sharing information and photographs. She also sent a picture of herself and yes, she’s a lot younger than I am!

I thought the picture she was referring to was not a wedding picture, although Hezekiah and his wife, Emma, were dressed up. I was more inclined to think they were dressed for a formal photograph or for some special occasion since they were both quite young when marred and this appeared to be them in middle-age perhaps. Hezekiah was my mother’s grandfather and I’ve written about him in a couple of previous blogs.

My mother had actually met Jo Davidson’s great-great- grandfather and had written a description of her memory of him in some writing she did about the family history for my brothers and me. I was pleased to be able to send that to Jo. Of all the brothers she could have met I’m glad it was Jo’s great-great- grandfather whom she met and wrote about. What are the odds? One in six I guess.

I’m not sure what to do with all the photos she has sent, but I will try to save at least the ones that directly relate to Hezekiah and his family since my grandmother, on my mother’s side, was his daughter. Hezekiah Pennington Malone had seven brothers and one sister. He and Emma Hart Malone had three children, my grandmother and her two brothers.

I’m going to share some of the pictures she sent and any additional information that may relate to my two previous blogs about that part of the family. With all those children there are too many for me to consider tracking them and/or their descendants, but some of the relatives are trying to do this. It’s a bit like putting together a large jigsaw puzzle I think, finding pieces that fit together to make the whole.

H.P. Malone and granddaughter, Mary Elizabeth

It’s too bad my mother isn’t still alive to see how people are able to do research and to communicate with each other via the computer. I know she did some sleuthing on my father’s side of the family but mostly by exchanging snail-mail letters with a few relatives who were still alive. But to be able to compare notes so quickly and to see photographs would have been like magic for her. She always felt guilty at having taken the family bible to school and losing it because so many births, deaths and weddings had been recorded in it. The hand-written notes can never be replaced but her sadness would be much alleviated by learning that the information is readily available online for those who want to commit the time and effort. And there is even a library in Dunedin, Florida that has a section devoted to those ancestors. And there is a college named after the Malones. She would be so pleased.